Issue At Hand

The north central U.S. Corn Belt is representative of the arable agricultural systems that encompass nearly 40% of global land use and have an important effect on earth’s biodiversity and ecosystem services. Despite record productivity in harvest of annual row crops, there is mounting evidence that linked social and ecological aspects of this region are functioning in states of compromised resilience. As the Corn Belt enters a time of fast-paced and uncertain land-use change driven by the demands of the emerging bio-economy, regional landscape change will take place, impacting the resilience of rural social and ecological systems for years to come.

What We Hope to Accomplish

In this project, we work with rural stakeholders to examine the dynamic and interlinked social, ecological, and economic variables underlying Corn Belt land use change. The first goal of this research is to analyze how restoration of perennial vegetation interplays with social and ecological context at multiple scales to impact resilience of Corn Belt social-ecological systems.

Preliminary data from the rural Squaw Creek watershed indicate that watershed science, local community initiatives and federal farm policy are operating with little reference to one another. The second goal of our research is to bridge these gaps between science, people, and policy through the development of future policy and management scenarios.

How We Go About It

We address these goals through four linked objectives that examine restoration of perennial vegetation and social-ecological system resilience in Corn Belt agricultural landscapes at multiple scales. Hierarchy theory in ecology suggests that to understand patterns and processes at any one scale, you must consider the scales immediately above and below the scale of focus. In this analysis, we begin by studying the interactions between social and ecological processes at the intermediate landscape-community scales and then examine the smaller farm-household and larger regional-institutional scales. We conclude by considering interactions across all scales.

Specific project components follow: 1) Landscape Perceptions: We explore how farmers and rural stakeholders experience and value their landscape differently across different social and ecological scales through a series of ethno-

graphic depth interviews in one rural Corn Belt community. 2) Adoption of Perennials: Photo elicitation is used inthese interviews to investigate how adoption of practices that increase perennial vegetation in Corn Belt landscapes are constrained or enhanced by social and ecological factors at multiple scales. 3) Policy Scenarios: We assemble a diverse group of community and regional stakeholders to develop policy scenarios that address strategies promoting different levels of perennial vegetation in future landscapes. 4) Resilience Analysis: Dynamic systems models are developed to synthesize previous objectives and to analyze how perennial vegetation can constrain or enhance resilience and adaptive capacity across multiple social and ecological scales in the Corn Belt.